1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material and a method of processing this light-sensitive material. In particular, this invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material which contains novel timing DIR couplers and pyrazoloazole-based couplers, has high sensitivity, is excellent in color reproducibility, sharpness, graininess, and desilvering properties, and varies little in photographic properties during storage, and also to a method of processing this light-sensitive material.
2. Description of the Related Art
Silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials, especially color light-sensitive materials for photographing purposes are required to have high sensitivity and good graininess, color reproducibility, and sharpness, and to vary little in photographic properties during storage.
A coupler which releases a development-inhibiting compound via two timing groups is known as a means for improving color reproducibility and sharpness. Examples of this coupler are described in, e.g., JP-A-51-146828 ("JP-A" means Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application), JP-A-60-218645, JP-A-61-156127, JP-A-63-37346, JP-A-1-280755, JP-A-1-219747, JP-A-2-230139, EP 348139, EP 354,532, and EP 403,019. The use of these timing DIR couplers can enhance an interlayer effect or an edge effect to improve color reproducibility and sharpness to some extent. However, the release of a developing inhibitor is essentially performed through a single step, and the release timing is undesirable. Therefore, the effect of the coupler is still insufficient. In addition, light-sensitive materials using these couplers largely vary in photographic properties during storage.
On the other hand, JP-B-47-27411 ("JP-B" means Examined Published Japanese Patent Application), for example, has proposed a pyrazoloazole-based magenta coupler which does not cause much secondary absorption, is excellent in color hue of the coupler, and is therefore desirable in improving color reproducibility. However, no satisfactory color reproducibility has been obtained yet.
For the above reasons, several attempts have been made to achieve outstanding effects by combining a plurality of techniques, instead of using only the techniques described above. For example, combinations of pyrazoloazole-based magenta couplers and various development inhibitor-releasing compounds are proposed in JP-A-60-262158, JP-A-62-151850, JP-A-63-74058, JP-A-64-77056, and JP-A-1-251032. Although these combinations provide effects to a certain extent, they are still unsatisfactory in color reproducibility, sharpness, graininess, desilvering properties, and storage stability of a light-sensitive material.
In addition, combinations of so-called timing DIR couplers and bleaching accelerator-releasing compounds are proposed in, e.g., JP-A-63-216048, JP-A-2-39146, JP-A-2-44338, and JP-A-2-44339. These combinations are also still unsatisfactory though they can improve color reproducibility, desilvering properties, graininess, and sharpness to some extent.